{"id":18111,"date":"2026-06-20T13:02:01","date_gmt":"2026-06-20T13:02:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dev.iita.org\/news-item\/2025-southern-africa-hub-sah-retreat-charting-regional-strategies-and-enhancing-impact\/"},"modified":"2026-06-29T16:53:07","modified_gmt":"2026-06-29T16:53:07","slug":"2025-southern-africa-hub-sah-retreat-charting-regional-strategies-and-enhancing-impact","status":"publish","type":"news-item","link":"https:\/\/iita.org\/fr\/news-item\/2025-southern-africa-hub-sah-retreat-charting-regional-strategies-and-enhancing-impact\/","title":{"rendered":"2025 Southern Africa Hub (SAH) retreat: Charting regional strategies and enhancing impact"},"content":{"rendered":"The 2025 IITA<\/a> Southern Africa Hub (SAH) Retreat, held at Ciela Pleasure Resort in Lusaka, Zambia from April 27 to mai 3, 2025, served as a platform for strategic alignment and in-depth work planning for staff across the Southern Africa Hub. The retreat brought together key IITA staff from Angola, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, and Zambia to define regional strategies, strengthen work synergy and enhance the impact of agricultural research and development across Southern Africa.\n\n
\"IITA
IITA Southern Africa Hub staff during the retreat.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\nThe retreat focused on reviewing IITA\u2019s research activities, assessing unique priorities, and contexts of each country within the region.\n\nWith the aim of promoting collaboration and knowledge exchange, IITA staff collectively explored strategic directions that will maximize the institute\u2019s presence and contribution to agricultural transformation, food security, and improved livelihoods in the region.\n\nFocusing on translating broad objectives into actionable, country-specific strategies grounded in IITA\u2019s core strengths, the week-long retreat served as a forum for strategic planning, country-specific dialogue, and enhanced regional collaboration.\n

Key themes and discussions<\/h2>\nCentral to the retreat was the introduction and application of the PO3 framework\u2014 Purpose, Objectives, and Outputs. This model helped frame IITA\u2019s strategic engagement by answering why the institute is active in a given country, what its goals are, and how these goals will be achieved through research outputs and partnerships.\n\nCountry-specific updates were presented for Angola, Malawi, Mozambique, and Zambia, showcasing ongoing activities, achievements, and future plans. These sessions revealed unique agricultural challenges and opportunities, such as climate variability impacting maize production in Malawi and Angola\u2019s potential for large-scale arable farming.\n\nFeaturing the importance of partnerships, there was also emphasis on collaboration with national agricultural research systems (NARS), government agencies, the private sector, and international organizations.\n\nCommunication and visibility were highlighted as crucial to funding, stakeholder engagement, innovation adoption and research impact.\n\nThis framework analysed audience-focused messaging, targeted channels, and measurable outcomes.\n\nBy proactively showcasing value and impact, IITA Southern Africa Hub is enhancing reach, strengthening partnerships, and ensuring agriculture research and innovation reaches the farmers in Africa.\n\n
\"Some
Some of IITA Southern Africa Hub staff during a breakout session at the retreat.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Regional opportunities and expansion<\/h2>\nDiscussion around regional collaboration explored cross-border opportunities\u2014such as tapping into the cowpea market in Botswana\u2014 while looking at expansion into new opportunity countries – Botswana, Eswatini, Lesotho, Namibia, South Africa, and Zimbabwe with focus on agroecological fit and IITA\u2019s comparative advantages.\n

Strategic outcomes and recommendations<\/h2>\nWith a reaffirmed commitment to tailoring research and development initiatives to national agricultural agenda and moving away from a one-size-fits-all model, the retreat emphasized strengthening national research systems (NARS) as essential to IITA\u2019s sustainable impact strategy.Focusing on strategic priorities, there was strong consensus during the retreat on the need to pursue regional initiatives and leverage shared resources for greater impact. Critical areas of impact like climate-resilient crops for Malawi, support to NARS in Mozambique, crop diversification in Zambia, and focus on banana and cassava production in Angola were highlighted, with opportunities in dryland agriculture for Namibia and broader expansion in Zimbabwe also recognized.\n\n
\"Group
Group breakout session during the retreat.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\nIdentifying challenges like lack of capacity for seed companies to scale innovation, non-existent criteria for new country engagements, inconsistent donor support for collaborative initiatives, and provision for risk management \u2013 unanticipated losses from uncontrollable occurrences, participants at the retreat proposed solutions to address these areas.\n\nFrom supporting seed enterprises and diversified scaling strategies, active resource mobilization through well-aligned proposal, to robust contingency planning and risk mitigation measures, outcomes from the retreat will serve as a roadmap for IITA\u2019s continued engagement in Southern Africa.\n\nWith tailored approaches, strong partnerships, and strategically expanding into new areas, IITA-SAH is positioned to amplify impact on innovation scaling, agricultural transformation and improve livelihoods across the region.\n\nContributed by IITA-Southern Africa Hub <\/em>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The 2025 IITA Southern Africa Hub (SAH) Retreat, held at Ciela Pleasure Resort in Lusaka, Zambia from April 27 to May 3, 2025, served as a platform for strategic alignment and in-depth work planning for staff across the Southern Africa Hub.<\/p>","protected":false},"featured_media":18112,"template":"","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center 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